In Your Memory
by WrenchWielder
Summary: Skyfire wakes up damaged with the feeling he's been kidnapped, but without the memories to prove it. Don't worry though, his bonded are there to make sure everything is going to be ok.


**A/N: I may have forgotten about FF for a while. I got some reminders the other day though, which made me smile. So hi! This was a one-shot I did to help with writers block on my other stories. I would have put it up earlier, but it needed some editing.**

Skyfire woke up in an unfamiliar berth. It was large, even for him and his bonded trine together. His processor ached and his vision was filled with static. Coming online fully he looked about the unfamiliar room with the distinct impression that he'd been kidnapped and dragged here despite the large, open windows. Cautiously, he got up. His processor and gyros both protested the movement, but settled after a moment.

He tried accessing his recent memories, but they were all corrupted if not simply missing. The last clear memory he had was a storm— The storm! But no, he had a few hazy images of his conjux trine rescuing him. Anxious now, he tried to comm any of them, only to find that it wasn't working. Or, according to his diagnostics, the equipment had been completely removed. He glanced at his chronometer, but that seemed to be the most broken thing yet.

Fighting down a panic attack he reached out to his spark bonds. The bonds with his conjux endura were alarmingly weak and ragged, while his caretaker bonds with his creations were nonexistent to the point he feared they'd offlined until they faintly reached back to him. All five bonds stirred at his panic, sending soothing waves of calm and love. He was surprised to realize they'd been monitoring him through the bonds; had they been the ones to leave him here?

The love they sent him was tinged with something almost like an urgent desperation, though that could have just been the condition of the bonds. When had they gotten like that?

Skyfire hesitantly moved to the windows, contemplating whether it would be safe to leave through them or if it was a trap. He was startled as moments later the doors to the room burst open, his conjux trine spilling in. They were wearing completely different frames from what he remembered; though the odd frames matched the few images he'd gotten from his corrupted memories. Their body language was off too.

"What's going on?"

Instead of answering, Skywarp grabbed his arm with a grip that promised he wasn't letting go and dragged him back to the berth.

"You shouldn't be up yet." Thundercracker said softly. "Though, since you are…" Thundercracker pulled out a cube of energon. He looked hesitant, which Skyfire didn't understand. Sure, Skyfire thought Thundercracker's inclination to hand feeding him when possible was extremely odd, but he'd never objected in the past. "You must be hungry by now."

A glance to his fuel levels showed he was indeed low, though he wasn't sure if he could trust any of his diagnostics at the moment.

Walking forwards, Thundercracker gently grabbed his chin and tilted it up; slightly taller while Skyfire was sitting. Skyfire drank the cube and tried not to react too much to the way Thundercraker's fingers traced his face reverently, as if it had been far too long since he'd last been able to do this. A tension bled out of Thundercracker' frame that Skyfire hadn't realized was there in the first place.

When Skyfire finished the cube Thundercracker dispersed it and settled against the side Skywarp wasn't already occupying.

Starscream grabbed his servo and attention, settling himself on Skyfire's lap. Where Thundercracker had been hesitant and Skywarp was clingy, Starscream had nothing but triumph shining in his optics.

"How are you feeling?"

Skyfire couldn't help but smile back at that. It was hard not to, when faced with that infectious trademark Starscream smirk. Someone was getting everything they wanted exactly how they wanted it. The whole situation was off, and there was definitely something going on, but the look in Starscream's optics was enough to assure him everything was just fine.

An image flashed across his processor of Starscream smiling up at him in front of a white backdrop. It made him… uneasy. And a little sad. Corrupted as the memory was though, he chalked it up to faulty emotional/visual association.

"A lot of my memories have been corrupted, and I think I've got far more missing. What happened? How did we get here? Where is here?"

Anger and sorrow warred for a moment in Starscream's optics. "You were tricked. Into joining… a bad crowd. We— We almost lost you."

Knowing how hard something like that would have been to admit, Skyfire pulled Starscream close.

"I'm sorry." He whispered.

"We rescued you from them as soon as we could, but the damage had already been done. They refused to give you up and we were forced to hide you away while you recovered. It was bad enough we had to get a mnemosurgeon involved."

A mnemosugreon? Then why were his memories still corrupted? Usually the offending code, memories, whatever would be removed. Didn't those kind of surgeries cause corrupted memories when the patient had a strong attachment to the memories attempting to be removed? Why wouldn't he want those memories removed? What were they hiding from him? He couldn't imagine them purposely doing anything to harm him. At the same time—

His thoughts were suddenly derailed; whatever he'd been thinking about slipping away.

"I'm sure you've noticed your comlink is missing." Thundercracker chipped in. "It's in pieces several systems away; they were tracking you with it."

"How did my chronometer break?" Skyfire didn't like the way Thundercracker stiffened at that. Or the way Skywarp seemed to burrow further into him.

"It's not broken."

"…Then I'm missing a lot more memories than I thought."

"You're only missing a few orns of memory. You crashed in a storm and it took us a long time to find you again."

Skyfire stared at Starscream while the reality of the situation dawned on him; sinking in slowly. His spark quailed as the full weight of that tiny fact seemed to slowly crush him.

There was an old, heavy pain in Starscream's optics and Skyfire found himself looking away.

He was the oldest of the four, and Starscream the youngest. Skyfire shouldn't be able to look into Starscream's optics and see the weight of the world and countless lonely vorns.

No, not countless. The number was easily quantifiable, glaring at him from his chronometer; one hundred and thirty four _thousand_ five hundred vorns. What wasn't so easy was wrapping his head around it. That was a lifetime. He couldn't have missed so much time. What had happened to his conjux in all that time? Primus, _what had happened to his sparklings?_ He'd missed their entire adult lives.

"Where—"

"The next floor down. They'll be taking care of you when we're gone, so they agreed to let us have a few moments alone with you."

"When you're gone?" It seemed Skyfire didn't even have time to process one thing before the next came along.

"There's a war going on." Thundercracker said. At the word 'war,' images tried to flash across his vision, but were stopped by a firewall that felt more like a virus. It must have been from the mnemosurgeon. The image of a pair of red and yellow grounders made it through briefly and Skyfire found himself wondering at the fact that he hoped they were all right despite them wearing a different sigil than his seekers. Maybe they were in a different unit? The firewall-virus surged and all he was left with was the vague hope that someone was ok. "We're high ranking officers of one of the factions. We made time to help you, but until the war ends most of our time will be spent there."

They gave him a moment to let that sink in.

"I want to help."

"Absolutely not." Starscream spat.

Skyfire looked to him in defiance. "And why not? If this is so important you've made yourself high ranking officers, shouldn't I help? If nothing else I could be a scientist or a medic."

"Please Sky," Thundercracker's voice was soft. "We've lost you _twice_ now. There's a crystal in your garden that was planted for you after Starscream came home alone. It was planted during your _funeral_ as a memorial to you. When you were found, only for you to join— …the enemy, you can't imagine how that felt for us. Maybe we were lucky circumstances didn't let us properly celebrate finding you or mourn losing you _again_. We just want you as far away from the war as possible."

Guilt silenced Skyfire's vocalizer. Starscream didn't take long to break the quiet, still brimming with the excitement he walked in with.

"The war is almost over. It's been a long one, but we're so close to the end. We just had a major victory that I think's really going to make a difference in the long run." Starscream possessively curled his servo around Skyfire's own. "Until then it's better for everyone if you stay here. If you really want to feel useful, you can get a head start on restoration projects."

Starscream locked optics with Skyfire meaningfully; his optics hardening into a look that meant he would move ground and sky to get his way. "Promise me Sky. That you'll stay here, safe. And that when the time comes, you will take your place by our side; helping us to rule over rebuilt Vos and Altihex."

"…I promise."

 **A/N: Hope you liked it! I had this idea and was planning on using it (as well as several other little scenes/ideas that may or may not get written and added to this) for a larger story, but have since scrapped the story for reasons.**

 **I've actually been writing quite a bit as of late which is exciting. Unfortunately it's either, A, not for the** _ **next**_ **chapter of any of the stories I've got on here, or B, for one of the stories I'm not going to start posting chapters for until they're basically done. The next chapter of YY is probably the next thing you guys will see, though it's just as likely not the next thing to get worked on so we'll see when.**


End file.
